Food for thought

Posted by Ben 

The UK might be doing remarkably well at the Olympics but elsewhere we are doing even better - we are actually top of a league:

1. UK     27m

2. Italy  20m

3. Spain 17m

4. France 13m

5. Germany 10m

Looks good doesn’t it? The problem is this is a league table of Europe’s top five dumpers of household waste into landfill expressed in millions of tonnes. And 6.7 million tonnes of our annual waste is from household food, predominantly disposed of in landfills - and to make matters worse (or perhaps better), we are running out of landfill sites - London’s will be full in just over one year’s time. The Government is now aggressively applying increasingly punitative taxes on landfill waste to encourage recycling and to meet EU targets - but one other solution is the anaerobic digester - a waste disposal unit designed to turn leftover food into electricity and fertilser. Joan Ruddock, the Environment Minister, described a biodigester she visited in Ludlow as “the way forward” saying anaerobic digestion is extremely attractive “Why would we go on throwing food into holes in the ground when we could generate our own electricity and end up with a product that can be returned  to the soil. It seems to me that a plant of this scale would fit into any industrial estate anywhere in the country. While the decision has to be taken locally - and in consultation with residents - I am sure this is the way forward”.  The technology has been available for decades and Germany (proudly BOTTOM of the league table) which already has 4,000 digesters. Ludlow produces 4,000 tonnes of fertiliser and 1,000 tonnes of biogas, used to generate electricity - 95% of which goes into the national grid.  We throw away 4.8 billion grapes, 1.6 billion potatoes, 2.6 billion slices of bread and 440 million suasages each year -  this, along with the 1.2 million tonnes of food thrown away still in its packaging is surely food for thought.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4561236.ece